Sermons – The Episcopal Church in Almaden

Words, words, words…

RCL Year B, Proper 19 Several years ago I spent a week in the Taizé community in France. There were 4 or 5000 people there, mostly under the age of 30 – at Easter they get upwards of 10,000 – and three times a day the whole community gathered into the big church for worship […]

Is our circle big enough?

RCL Year B, Proper 18 All around us, kids have gone back to school. Today our Sunday School began. So I want us to think about school today, too. Remember, if you will, when you were in junior high school. Take a moment and think of it. Where did you fit in when you were […]

Living in integrity

RCL Year B, Proper 17   The following is more notes than a polished text, from the 7:30 service on September 2. I’m going to tell you why I started eating vegetarian. It happened while I lived in England, around when mad-cow disease was vividly feared. But that wasn’t why. I had flirted with the […]

Staying or going?

RCL Year B, Proper 16 Perhaps you know this song:   Darling you gotta let me know Should I stay or should I go? If you say that you are mine I’ll be here til the end of time So you got to let me know Should I stay or should I go? Perhaps only […]

Taking the time

RCL Year B, Proper 15   Before I begin this sermon, I want you to stop and remember a meal. Not just any meal. I want you to remember a meal you had, big or small, that tasted really, really good. Maybe it was a fancy meal out at a restaurant; maybe it was something […]

The Rev. Jerry Drino – guest preacher

The bread of life

RCL Year B, Proper 14 I’ve been with you at ECA long enough that you probably have a pretty good sense of who I am. You see me parent my kids, you engage with me in meetings and conversations, you listen to me preach. You might think you know me well enough to predict what […]

Sin and forgiveness

RCL Year B, Proper 13 The other day I was driving the kids to their summer day camp, with the morning radio on. A talk show began on the topic of climate change and global warming, with an interview of Richard Muller, a UC Berkeley professor of physics who has recently come around to the […]

When plans fail

RCL Year B, Proper 11 Life is what happens when you’re making other plans. Or, in another way of putting it: if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. That seems to be the gist of what we hear in today’s readings. In the first, David is seized with the brilliant and […]

Can you help me?

RCL Year B, Proper 8   There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you all about, and today’s texts give me the perfect opportunity to do it. It’s something that will scare some of you. It’s something that I have seen many of you resist, something some of you have even fought hard against. […]

God is stronger than our fears

RCL Year B, Proper 7 Ok, so the first reading didn’t have to be as long as we read it today. About half of it was in brackets in the lectionary, meaning it was suggested but not required as the Old Testament scripture for the day. But it’s such a great story that I thought […]

God’s kingdom of losers

RCL Year B, Proper 6   So in the saga of Israel’s kings, things have not turned out well with King Saul. Samuel told the people it was a bad idea to ask for a king, but they wanted one anyway. And Saul has not turned out to be a godly king. He has disobeyed […]

Who’s our king?

RCL Year B, Proper 5 In the church lectionary – the cycle of scripture readings – we now settle into the long season of ‘ordinary time.’ After all the readings chosen for the themes of the season, now we get to spend a long period just following the narratives along, hearing about casts of characters […]

Why does the Trinity matter to us?

RCL Year B, Trinity Sunday So it’s Trinity Sunday. I’m going to begin by saying that it really doesn’t matter to me whether you accept the doctrine of the Trinity or not. Christians can get really caught up on doctrine, even those of us in the squishy Episcopal Church who don’t think doctrine matters that […]

Living through change

RCL Year B, 7 Easter A few months back when the liturgy committee and our stewardship chair talked about focusing on stewardship in this season of Easter, we looked at the readings for each week to see what different angles on the theme were suggested by the scriptures. We had a few ideas in mind […]

Everyone is gifted

RCL Year B, 6 Easter   We’re working our way through this theme of stewardship during Easter season. If you’ve heard me more than once, you should be getting the idea now. Everything we have is of God; we are stewards and caretakers of it, for the good of others. This idea shapes all we […]

God in our daily life

RCL Year B, 5 Easter We’re still exploring the theme of stewardship in this season of Easter, looking at all the ways we care for and live out God’s gifts in our lives. On Earth Day we talked about care for creation; last week we talked about caring for brothers and sisters near and far […]

Stewards of God’s love

RCL Year B, 4 Easter It’s the season of Easter, a season of resurrection, a time of abundance of life and gratitude. We’re talking about stewardship, about how we live faithfully as stewards, caretakers, of all that God gives us to watch over. We have so many gifts: our own skills and resources, our work, […]

Being stewards of creation

Earth Day RCL Year B, 3 Easter We’re in the great 50 days of Easter, a whole season where Sunday after Sunday we hear story after story of Jesus resurrected, Jesus alive and appearing to his amazed disciples. Every one of the stories is just about the same as every other one: there the disciples […]

The story goes on

RCL Year B, Easter Day   So off went the women with this marvelous message: Jesus is risen from the dead, he’s going ahead of you, you will see him! And they told no one, for they were afraid. And that’s the end of Mark’s gospel, the shortest, possibly the oldest, of the four gospels. […]

Why Good Friday matters

Here we are, gathered together into church in the middle of the day on a Friday. Here today because each of us somehow believe that this day matters, that it is important enough to spend time in church in the very middle of this day.  And yet it always strikes me:  there is a whole […]

Never forsaken

RCL Year B, Palm Sunday It is always pretty redundant to preach a sermon after the Passion story is read like that. What more is there to say that has not already been said? And yet even with this story we can forget to hear it, really hear it – it can roll right over […]

Ultimate forgiveness

RCL Year B, 5 Lent All season long, we’ve been talking about covenant. Our scriptures tell us of our relationship with God, seen through the long history of covenants between God and us. God created us good in the beginning, but we went the other way instead. God despaired of our improving ourselves, so God […]

Cause and effect

RCL Year B, 4 Lent Things in the world of covenant relationship have gotten a little darker with today’s reading. You could say Genesis is a long love story between God and God’s people – not all of it rosy, of course, but overall it’s about God’s desire and love for us: our creation, the […]

Our part of the relationship

RCL Year B, 3 Lent   I started off my Lenten preaching two weeks ago talking about covenant, and the relationship we have with God and with each other. Our Old Testament texts through Lent all deal with covenant, from Noah to Abraham, Moses and on from there. It’s a great opportunity for talking about […]

God loves you already

RCL Year B, 1 Lent Well, Lent has begun. It is a season of renewal and penitence, a season when we are encouraged to look more closely at our lives, to readdress our balance of time and energy, to focus more intently on our relationship to God and to each other. Often we use Lent […]

Healing and grace

RCL Year B, 6 Epiphany I’ve been talking about call and vocation, how God calls us and our ways of answering and not answering that call. God has desires for us and our lives, ultimately desiring us to be followers and friends of Jesus and the life he shows us. But sometimes we have a […]

Clarifying our call

RCL Year B, 5 Epiphany A few weeks ago I preached on vocation and call, about listening for what God wants us to do and keeping tabs on our own attempts to run away from it. Last week I talked about pilgrimage, our pilgrimage together at ECA as we seek out God’s call to us […]

A year of pilgrimage

ECA Annual Meeting: 29 January 2012 Today is our Annual Meeting, a chance for us to look at the last year of our life together. Now that was a compelling gospel reading we just heard. But as much as I’d like to talk to you all about exorcism, I just can’t make it fit well […]

When we feel like running away

RCL Year B, 3 Epiphany Last week I talked about call, how God speaks to us in ways great and small and invites us to follow, sometimes into unknown and scary places. We learn to hear and recognize God’s voice over time, and we shape our lives into how God would have them be. God […]

Listening for God

RCL Year B, 2 Epiphany Today in our scriptures we got to hear two different stories of people at the very beginning of their relationships with God, two tales of people being called to and drawn by a God they don’t yet know.  First, the prophet Samuel, just coming into his own as a young […]

You are the beloved

RCL Year B, Baptism of Our Lord Jesus came to John and was baptized by him in the river Jordan. And Jesus came up out of the water and the Spirit descended on him and he heard a voice saying, You are my Son, the beloved – with you I am well pleased. And so […]

New Year, New Name

In T.S. Eliot’s book of poems about cats, there’s one called ‘The Naming of Cats.’ Eliot says every cat has three names: the everyday name the family uses, like James or George; the particular, dignified name like Quaxo or Coricopat that the cat can be proud of; and one other: But above and beyond there’s […]

Let every heart prepare him room

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. There’s a tradition in the Mexican community called Las Posadas. In the week before Christmas, people go knocking door to door, looking for room […]

Witnessing to the light

For my birthday last Sunday, my family took me to the best Christmas pageant ever – well, the best one until ours next week, of course.  It’s a Mexican pageant play that is put on every year at the mission church in San Juan Bautista by a theater company called El Teatro Campesino. At Christmastime […]

Prepare the way

RCL Year B, 2 Advent   We get to have a couple of weeks of gospel stories about John the Baptist, and I am thrilled. I have an ever-increasing love and respect for John.  When I was younger I found him off-putting – I think I just thought he was weird, out there eating locusts […]

What waiting really means

Here’s my warning to you:  the season of Advent puts me in an existential frame of mind.  The scripture readings, the short days, the insane pace of the world around us, all of it gives me pause.  This time of year can be the best of times and the worst of times all at once […]

How to love your neighbor

RCL Year A, Proper 29   And with that gospel reading, we wind up our church year.  This is the last Sunday in the year on the church calendar, and the last Sunday of readings from Matthew’s gospel – next week we begin with the gospel of Mark and stay with that more or less […]

Expectations of God

RCL Year A, Proper 28   So, the parable of the talents.  A few weeks ago my folks were visiting and my father buttonholed me on this very parable and what in the world it means.  Their church had been using Luke’s version of the parable in a stewardship study and Dad found the interpretation […]

All Saints

RCL Year A, Proper 27 Happy Birthday, ECA!  On All Saints Day, 1967, ECA founding members formally applied for mission status in the Diocese of California, the diocese we were part of at the time.  Today we remember the saints of 44 years ago who founded this congregation – and we celebrate ourselves, the community […]

God’s fairness

RCL Year A, Proper 26   Well, this is an awkward text for a priest in vestments to preach on.  It’s always a little embarrassing to realize that Jesus is talking about you, and not in a flattering kind of way.  I was reading this text with other clergy this week and one man noted […]

Let God love through you

RCL Year A, Proper 25   We’re hearing in these few weeks about a series of confrontations between Jesus and the leaders of the Jewish people – Jesus has told scathing parables on the Pharisees and Sadducees and others, pointing out their faults and failings, and they have responded with tests designed to trip him […]

Give to God what is due to God

RCL Year A, Proper 24 Things have started to get nasty between Jesus and his adversaries.  Today is the first of their attempts to confront Jesus and try to trip him up, but there will be more.  He’s in Jerusalem now, teaching in the temple.   He is in the last week of his life.  […]

Accepting the invitation

RCL Year A, Proper 23 Just imagine what it would feel like, giving a big party and having no one show up.   Maybe it’s even happened to you once or twice – I hope not.  Sometimes church events are just about like that, of course!   But we can imagine what it would feel like:  humiliating; […]

Our gladness meets their hunger

This is the third in a series of three sermons on our vision for ECA RCL Year A, Proper 22 This is the third of our three weeks of vineyard parables.  Each time the message has gotten sharper.  From the expansive mercy of the first parable – the story of the laborers in the vineyard […]

Our strengths can meet the needs around us

Last week I talked in my sermon about my vision for ECA, that we can become a parish church.  By that I mean that we would see ourselves as responsible for and connected to the welfare of the community around us, those who do not come to our church and those who do.  I talked […]

Vision: ECA is a parish church

This is the first of three sermons on my vision for our community.   RCL Year A, Proper 20 Here’s the history of this parish as I understand it.  In the late ‘60s new housing developments were being built in this area, what used to be orchards.  Companies were beginning to locate here and people […]

Forgiveness and 9/11

RCL Year A, Proper 19 It’s a challenging day for preaching.  It’s our fall kickoff day, the day we’re back to our usual service schedule, when Sunday School and youth group get started, when we commission teachers and think ahead for the new year.  A happy see-your-friends-and-family kind of day.  A day for a barbecue […]

The Labor Day Sabbath

RCL Year A, Proper 18 I spent most of last week backpacking with Jim in the Sierras, up near Sonora Pass.  We got up at 4am Monday and drove up the road, stopping only to pick up our permit at the ranger station.  We were on the trail by 10:30, and spent that day walking, […]

Deny yourself, and love

RCL Year A, Proper 21 Matthew 16:21-28 Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, […]